So, as we all know, there will be an explosion of hybrids now (yes, I made mine lol). I'm curious if anyone has any thoughts on if this will cause issues. Especially in LFR where you may or may not be playing with the same group of people every game. I fully expect to often see tables that are at least half hybrds if not more. I think most would agree hybrids are going to be good at this and that, but probably not going to be able to fill a role as well as a pure character would.

I mean, say you have a pally|sorcerer and a fighter|ranger etc. Its great that they can do cool stuff, but neither would be a great defender in my opinion. Then, I think, we will find certain roles left open or unfufilled and I'm just curious if this will have any long term play effect?

I realize not everyone will play a hybrid. I realize even before them, not every role was filled. I'm not even saying an optimized table, I'm just saying as far as a decently balanced party. I'm not missing the obvious ( I dont think ) but I'm just curious how it will work out until the next new thing comes out and hybrids aren't the "it" thing.

One of my regular groups, the DM rotates through the players. So we're always down one member, and so have a strong desire for everyone to have a good ability to pick up a secondary role.

When we next create new characters (soon), I expect about half the table to go hybrid.

I'm not going to. I looked around some, and decided that it was too hard to make a hybrid character that doesn't suck. Much easier to make an optimized single-class character. So one gnome illusionist coming up. (No secondary role on the theory "no one will miss the controller." )

"Nice assumptions. Completely wrong assumptions, but by jove if being incorrect stopped people from making idiotic statements, we wouldn't have modern internet subculture." Kerrus
Practical gameplay runs by neither RAW or RAI, but rather "A Compromise Between The Gist Of The Rule As I Recall Getting The Impression Of It That One Time I Read It And What Jerry Says He Remembers, Whatever, We'll Look It Up Later If Any Of Us Still Give A Damn." Erachima

Hybrids seem to suck less when the roles match. A Fighter|Paladin, for example, fills their role just fine and works well if your racial choice matches the stat requirements (Dragoborn can make good F|Ps with their STR/CHA boosts for example). Next is different roles, but the stat requirements match (and sometimes power source), say a Wizard|Swordmage (both INT), or a Ranger|Fighter (Both STR primary and Wis secondary), but you atillaren't as good as a single role character. When the choices make your characer MAD is when they really go down hill.

Sorry WOTC, you lost me with Essentials. So where I used to buy every book that came out, now I will be very choosy about what I buy. Can we just get back to real 4e?
Check out the 4e Conversion Wiki.
1. Wizards fight dirty. They hit their enemies in the NADs. -- Dragon9
2. A barbarian hits people with his axe. A warlord hits people with his barbarian.
3. Boo-freakin'-hoo, ya light-slingin' finger-wigglers. -- MrCelcius in response to the Cleric's Healer's Lore nerf

I think the larger issue is that some players won't understand what they're doing with them. There are a number of perfectly valid hybrids that merely need to spend the feat on Hybrid Talent to make things work.

To go down the roles:Defenders tend to have weak marks and are dependent on Hybrid Talent to get their AC back in line. This is probably the biggest weakness of the system at the moment and it isn't clear how you'd fix it. Even picking two different defenders doesn't really fix it.

Strikers are fine - they just need to pick a class that has strong additional features to go with the ability to do damage. Ranger goes with almost anything, especially things with ranged immediate options or with strong class features.

Controllers are fine. The one issue is that there aren't a lot of single stat options for the Controllers, though that ought to change.

Leaders are fine, if a little odd. You can create an actual Leader by picking two Leader classes. Cleric goes with almost anything.

Not sure why you're finding it so hard kilpatds - Gnome Wizard|Bard with 18 Int/Cha is staring you right in the face. Or Gnome Wizard|Warlock for controller/striker. Or Gnome Wizard|Paladin for some off-defender moves.

Pratically you just need high attributes in the modifiers that affect your powers, then focus on getting the features you actually want. Add a defender for combat and health (though not necessarily for marks, though the swordmages still works good if I been reading it right.) Pick a controller if you don't want all the fraility of one, while still being able to hit a large group. Pick a striker for juicy damage or fleeing powers, and pick a leader for healing or boosts. They are never as good as a total class, but they can definatly (as a whole) equal, and depending on the player) be better than the original classes, though that is more based on personal taste.

Not sure why you're finding it so hard kilpatds - Gnome Wizard|Bard with 18 Int/Cha is staring you right in the face. Or Gnome Wizard|Warlock for controller/striker. Or Gnome Wizard|Paladin for some off-defender moves.

A Wizard/Bard means my to-hit with my control effects are down by 1 (from not having a starting 20 int). 2 if I need to pick up Hybrid Talent and so have to put off Gnome Illusionist or Focused expertise off by a level. I don't get my "I guess I didn't miss by one afterall" class feature (Wand Wizard). And as a focused controller, I'd have to give up a power slot for something less interesting. So it's not a better controller than a Gnome Wizard, I feel.(Gnome Wizard|Paladin falls strictly into "unworkable" as far as I can tell. Gnome Bard I could at least pretend to be a wizard with extra weapon proficiencies, and a 1/encounter healing word.)

"Nice assumptions. Completely wrong assumptions, but by jove if being incorrect stopped people from making idiotic statements, we wouldn't have modern internet subculture." Kerrus
Practical gameplay runs by neither RAW or RAI, but rather "A Compromise Between The Gist Of The Rule As I Recall Getting The Impression Of It That One Time I Read It And What Jerry Says He Remembers, Whatever, We'll Look It Up Later If Any Of Us Still Give A Damn." Erachima

"Nice assumptions. Completely wrong assumptions, but by jove if being incorrect stopped people from making idiotic statements, we wouldn't have modern internet subculture." Kerrus
Practical gameplay runs by neither RAW or RAI, but rather "A Compromise Between The Gist Of The Rule As I Recall Getting The Impression Of It That One Time I Read It And What Jerry Says He Remembers, Whatever, We'll Look It Up Later If Any Of Us Still Give A Damn." Erachima

Could use a staff to do all of its powers, fwiw. More hp than a wizard and a better feat option than 'leather armor' for upping AC higher, including shields. Not that many hp less than a normal paladin, and probably more cool interrupts like shield or wizard's escape. Could challenge at range and use entirely ranged attacks if you wanted to go that route.

Not saying I'd play one, but doesn't seem as insurmountable as you might think. Then again, I don't normally start with an 20 in a stat at 1st level either, so I may be operating at a lower level of optimization.

(I don't normally start with a 20 stat, but so much of a controllers power is in hitting, it seems like a really good idea.)

"Nice assumptions. Completely wrong assumptions, but by jove if being incorrect stopped people from making idiotic statements, we wouldn't have modern internet subculture." Kerrus
Practical gameplay runs by neither RAW or RAI, but rather "A Compromise Between The Gist Of The Rule As I Recall Getting The Impression Of It That One Time I Read It And What Jerry Says He Remembers, Whatever, We'll Look It Up Later If Any Of Us Still Give A Damn." Erachima

Not sure why you're finding it so hard kilpatds - Gnome Wizard|Bard with 18 Int/Cha is staring you right in the face. Or Gnome Wizard|Warlock for controller/striker. Or Gnome Wizard|Paladin for some off-defender moves.

A Wizard/Bard means my to-hit with my control effects are down by 1 (from not having a starting 20 int). 2 if I need to pick up Hybrid Talent and so have to put off Gnome Illusionist or Focused expertise off by a level. I don't get my "I guess I didn't miss by one afterall" class feature (Wand Wizard). And as a focused controller, I'd have to give up a power slot for something less interesting.

You were not talking about being super-optimized for one role; you were talking about not sucking as a hybrid. Each of those don't suck.

Wizard|Bard with 18 Int/Cha hits often enough, has two good defenses, and brings a heal/slide to every combat. There are some pretty good Bard powers with controller-lite effects. Vicious Mockery actually is a specific Wizard at-will. And Orb of Deception is made for you. Finally, you have 3 more points for something other than your primary and secondary stats.

Wizard|Paladin might sound odd, but you were spending a feat on Leather armor anyway and now you get either Hide/Shield or Plate/Shield. And note, you can load up a Holy Symbol for your Wizard powers...

I think winning the skill challenges is a big part of LFR, and Hybrid characters will have a notable disadvantage in skill challenges.

However, it certainly feels like Hybrid characters will often be more powerful than non-Hybrid. Consider a Ranger/Cleric Hybrid. You can basically get striker level ranger damage regularly with a bunch of added healing and control effects.

Wizard/Artificer with spending the hybrid talent on the Wizards feature gets all of the wizard powers, plus added healing.

Invoker Cleric, Invoker Shaman, are other examples of classes that feel to me to be just plain better than any Invoker I could make.

The new version of Hybrid goes a long way towards making characters more balanced with non-hybrid MC characters, thankfully. There are definitely some weak spots, though -- Defenders, in particular, are hit pretty hard, especially since there is no may not be a Hybrid Talent feat in LFR (yet).

In general, hybrid characters increase the complexity of a character (for some people, this is gold; for others, they should probably not be allowed to play a hybrid character), and hybrids do bring back many of the `starts rough, but eventually is awesome' aspects of previous editions. I'm expecting to see many new hybrid characters at DDXP; I'm hoping that not too many of them are Defenders or Leader/Nonleaders, though - those combinations seem to be especially slow-starters.

The new version of Hybrid goes a long way towards making characters more balanced with non-hybrid MC characters, thankfully.

Compared to what? The released final version had almost nothing changed from the 2nd playtest. Someone posted a good analysis on the CharOp board of what changed from the 2nd playtest to the final version and it's only a couple things. Frankly, I think it needed a lot more work. Err... needs a lot more work. But it is what it is.

Sorry WOTC, you lost me with Essentials. So where I used to buy every book that came out, now I will be very choosy about what I buy. Can we just get back to real 4e?
Check out the 4e Conversion Wiki.
1. Wizards fight dirty. They hit their enemies in the NADs. -- Dragon9
2. A barbarian hits people with his axe. A warlord hits people with his barbarian.
3. Boo-freakin'-hoo, ya light-slingin' finger-wigglers. -- MrCelcius in response to the Cleric's Healer's Lore nerf